Guest post by Margy Dorr
My time as a volunteer at Hidden Villa has been a unique and treasured experience. Not only am I enamored with the beautiful natural landscape, I am also surrounded by a rich history while working with the development team in the Duveneck House.
Tags: job skills, Volunteering, internships, intern, Hidden Villa internship program Read More
From the February 2012 e.News
Well, it looks as if winter has officially arrived here at Hidden Villa! There's a noticeable frost on the ground in the mornings, the creek has slowly started flowing again and our fields are lying fallow until the spring! I'm always delighted to see the creek return after the season's first significant rainfall as it's a tangible indicator not only of the seasonal transition but also of programmatic cycles on the farm.
Tags: Community Supported Agriculture, Summer Camp, seasonality, education, Executive Director Read More
Guest post by Tenaya Schnare
I am standing with a group of eight second-graders on a trail at the edge of the farm. We can still hear the goats bleating into the crisp fall air, but this spot on the path marks the transition from farm—the sound of tractors heaving bucket loads of animal bedding, chickens strutting and scratching in their yard, the earthy, sweet smell of goats—into the wilderness. I crouch down at eye level and in a soft, almost sing-song voice tell the children that we are going to do something called a caterpillar walk.
Tags: Hidden Villa Environmental Education Program, HVEEP, environmental education Read More
This dish, featured at Hidden Villa's Second Annual Meat Tasting Tour, combines the sweet-tart flavor of hard apple cider with the earthy aroma of rosemary for an intensely flavorful sauce that, when lamb is in the picture, begs for a chewy slice of bread to mop up what's left in the pan (if there is anything left). By first browning the shanks then braising them in a Dutch oven for a few hours over low heat you are creating a rich, silky sauce and fork tender lamb that will reinvigorate your tired tastebuds in time for spring. Photo courtesy of the Los Altos Town Crier.
Hidden Villa's Development Associate Bryden Johnston took a picture of the creek as it fills with water from this weekend's rain. Click on on the photo to zoom out and see the whole picture.
Tags: photo contest, photography Read More
Happy New Year, sorry for being a bit late on these, hopefully we’ll get back in the rhythm quickly.
Tags: Animal Notes, farm animals, Animal Husbandry Program, animals, chickens, pigs, goats, cows
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A roulade is a wonderful way to pair your favorite meat with fresh, seasonal vegetables, fruits and herbs with minimal fuss and maximum presentability. Guests will enjoy the elegant spiral of perfectly-cooked meat wrapped delicately around a savory filling; alternatively, feel free to eat this with your fingers right off the cutting board (like we did). This recipe, featured at Hidden Villa's Second Meat Tasting Tour alongside last week's anticuchos, pairs lamb with dried apricots and arugula, but there's no reason you shouldn't experiment with what's on hand.
Guest post by Daniel Chmielewski
"Connected, connected, everything’s connected.” One of the well known songs at Hidden Villa, it strikes a central point in the ecological imperative of our times: "to recognize and understand that humans are intrinsically related to all life and the systems which support it (water, air, soil).” Once “unconnected” we risk alienation from the natural flow of life processes and education, whether through formal or informal experience, is a bridge into being connected. My internship at Hidden Villa has been rich in education and in my eyes, most importantly, exposure. In my second year here, seasonal changes of weather, edible and ornamental agriculture, animal husbandry, environmental education, and sustainability have deeply connected me to the land and to the future.
Tags: permaculture, Hidden Villa internship program, intern, internships, externship, green skills training Read More
On Saturday, December 17th, a small group of Hidden Villa supporters, local meat merchants and a few members of the press was invited to join Hidden Villa's Animal Husbandry Manager for a workshop and tasting tour featuring traditional (and untraditional!) cuts of our sustainable, organically-raised meats. We are delighted to be able to share the recipes for four of the dishes served at this event with you. Starting today, we'll be posting a new recipe once a week with pictures! Here, you will find recipes for anticuchos (heart), braised cider lamb shanks, an apricot-spinach lamb roulade and ice cream with maple and bacon toppings. Photo courtesy of the Los Altos Town Crier.
Well it hardly seems possible but here we are at the end of 2011 already! The past eleven months have been particularly busy and productive here at Hidden Villa and we are looking forward with great anticipation towards 2012.
The interns have been talking a lot about collectives and cooperative living recently. On Monday, November 14th, we went to The Cheeseboard Collective in Berkeley where a member, who has been there for over twenty-five years, talked to us about the pros and cons of working in a collective. We sat on benches in a horseshoe shape and listened about how it took years of consensus decision making to decide on credit card machines or raises, all the while posing questions about how they deal with conflict resolution when there is no “boss”, about profit sharing, and how to hire someone new when every one of their thirty members has to give the okay. It was all very interesting and exciting, if not a little daunting. It is a radical idea in today’s society that everyone gets equal pay and equal say in a business no matter how long they have been working there.
Happy Thanksgiving! As our season draws to a close I want to thank all of you for your participation in our program this year. Your connection to us as a food source is what allows us to keep farming. I am grateful that people like yourselves are interested in exploring the specifics of our seasonality and entrusting us to provide much of the food that you eat. It is this support that lets us practice the farming and the education that we love. Thank you.
As the CSA season comes to an end, you may be thinking the same thing I am: Where am I going to get my vegetables now? We have been enjoying eating the delicious, organically and locally grown produce for months now- I feel slightly spoiled! I don't know if I want go back to the large supermarkets and buy the flavorless tomatoes, boring lettuce, or pears from Peru...
A lot of our time here at Hidden Villa is dedicated to food, one can infer this simply by reading these blog posts. We spend our time talking theory, everything from organics to nutrition, and sometimes it can get out there with wild sodas bubbling in the corner and meat-slab looking kombucha mothers drying in the courtyard. But things aren’t always up in the ether. What it comes down to is that we love food. Real food. (Guest post by Liz, our Public Programs Intern)
Daylight Savings always throws me a little off kilter. When I woke at a quarter to nine on Sunday, which is a little late for me, and then realized that it was actually only a quarter to eight, I was pleased. This gave me plenty of time to bake a delicious fresh raspberry and dried apple coffee cake for breakfast. Fall daylight savings is my favorite because we get a free hour. Conversely it also means that it is nearly dark at five and, recently, very cold. This is dual edged sword. I really love it when the season changes and the rains come that replenish our aquifers and change the landscape from the dead brown of late summer and early fall to the bright new green of winter and early spring. Yes, this is another story of how, as the season changes, the farm follows suit.
Hello from Hidden Villa’s Garden Outreach program! My name is Carey Fritz. As Garden Outreach Teacher Intern, I spend 2 days a week teaching off-site at Taft Community School and at John Gill Elementary. I am excited to share how I have been involved in our partnership schools in Redwood City in this guest post.
A breakfast (or anytime) treat my mom makes for special occasions. It is similar to a Dutch baby, but includes apples and cinnamon.
I wanted to share some thoughts I’ve had about our Animal Husbandry program at Hidden Villa recently. Maybe some of you have seen our eggs and meat at the Los Altos Farmer’s Market. Or you’ve visited Hidden Villa and stopped at Scarlet in her pigpen or watched Cleo the dairy cow graze in the pastures. The animals, overseen by the Animal Husbandry Department, are seemingly separate from our produce farming. However, it’s becoming clearer to me that animals are critical to an organic farming operation. For instance, we make our own compost and worm castings from the manure of our cows and pigs. These are the inputs that make our soil black gold, teeming with life from microorganisms in the dirt to the nutrients our crops absorb to grow. We are essentially creating a closed cycle in which the byproduct of animal production results in robust organic agriculture production; the compost and worm castings we make on site are better than anything we could buy (and they’re free). And though we do buy feed for our animals, their diets are supplemented with grazing in our pastures and the byproducts of our agriculture production. They happily eat our vegetable scraps, such as the sweet corn stalks that were left after you received corn in your CSA basket. Creating a closed cycle is a boon to the farming production- a win-win that is cost effective and minimizes waste.
I last wrote about some of the innovations that we are steadily making based upon our compiled observations. All these ideas and this information goes into a kind of living document that I have that is a detailed calendar charting the perfect growing season. So far in 15 years of farming this is my most refined approach to the predictive guesswork of managing crops. There is something very hopeful and expressive about a plan that assumes everything going well. Best laid plans… I hope that I have also learned to not become too expectant of some trend or pattern because it will probably change.
Tags: Crop Diversity, Ecological Farming Practice, Community Supported Agriculture Read More